Ramsey, eating like a hunter come home, suddenly stood. "Now look, everybody, at the Antelope. She's right abeam. Ain't she abeam, Mr. Watson?"
Watson drawled that she wasn't anything else, and Ramsey failed to see that he saw her cast an anxious glance down to the bell and the captain's chair beyond it.
L
"DELTA WILL DO"
In Horseshoe Cut-off the course was east. When Ned directed Ramsey's sight to its upper end, where the flood came into view from the north, she feared he would name the point it turned; but he forbore and she gazed on the thin old moon off in the southeast.
"Make out yan bunch o' sycamores?" was his nearest venture. The sycamores were on the point. Across the river where it ran concealed beyond those sycamores—he went on to tell—at the up-stream end of a low pencil stroke of forest between the head of the cut-off and the eastern stars, was another turn, Friar's Point. But her interest in points had faded, and whether friars abounded on that one or not she took pains not to inquire.
Instead, she was about to ask the cause of a strange silvering in the sky close over the black pencil stroke, when, as on Sunday, the morning star sprang into view and cast its tremulous beam on the waters. She gazed on the white splendor as genuinely enthralled as ever, though at the same time her eye easily, eagerly took in the first clerk, the senator, the general, and Hugh, standing about the captain's empty chair. They loomed as dimly as the sycamores, yet when a fifth figure drew near them she knew by his fine gait that it was the actor, relieved from the captain's sick-room by "California" and the cub pilot. A gesture from Hugh stopped him some yards off and he stood leaning on the bell.
For the actor was their theme. This was plain to every one in the pilot-house, the two waiters being gone. A remnant of the food was being consumed by "Harriet" and Joy. All the others were observing, like Ramsey, the morning star and the five men under it. Among her own and Mrs. Gilmore's draperies Ramsey found that lady's hand. Except a few low words between the pilots, conversation failed. Without leave-taking Ned left. Presently here he was beneath, on the skylight roof, and now he joined the actor. Ramsey let go the caressed hand and moved nearer to Watson. While he and she gazed far up the stream, yet watched the six men below, he repeated Ned's question.
"See that clump o' big sycamores a mite to lab-board o' where we're p'inted?"